1/ So I'm reading John McPhee's "Draft No. 4" before teaching writing non-fiction next term. In his 5th essay, "Frame of Reference" I hit a diagnostic list with which he tested the overlap between his recognized frames and that of a bunch of HS students at my son's school...
2/ Everyone, all 19 kids knew ten of the items -- Woody Allen, for example, Hamlet, Toronto, and so on. 18 got another four: Sarah Palin, Omaha, Barbra Streisand, and Rolls Royce. 1 fewer knew Paul Newman (what, no love for those blue, blue eyes?) and so on...
3/ On it went, the numbers falling off pretty fast. Everyone had recognized Muhammad Ali, but only 8 of the 19 got Cassius Clay. 3 twigged Rupert Murdoch (may his memory be a curse), and just 1 student each laid claim to Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh...
4/ Then came the orphans known to no one at all. McPhee weighted his list to London place names, so it's not all that suprising that even the pretty well-traveled kids of Brookline, MA might not know Peckham Rye. Thomas Hoving was kind of a trick name....
5/...a test, perhaps, as Hoving appears on p. 24 of this work, in McPhee's essay on structure. But it's not altogether surprising that 21st c. high school students wouldn't know of a director of the Metropolitan Museum whose term there ended in 1977. Anyway....
6/ As I read all this I am, of course, testing myself; how small "c" catholic is my frame of reference? How well do I track John McPhee's--that icon of my trade? Pretty well. I lunged for a some (Peckham Rye again, dimly remembered from hanging w. cousins in south London)...
7/ But there was only one of whom, though I remembered having heard the name, could not for the life of me place in any context: Jean Kerr.
Ah well -- parlor games for those whom words and facts are toys...
Ah well -- parlor games for those whom words and facts are toys...
8/ One last note. McPhee offers Y2K as an example of a term w/in frame with v. limited reach--how long will its scratch on historical memory remain detectable? For me what captures that sense of lost time is the phrase "core dump." As a kid, everyone I knew got that. Now?....
9/ And with that, this meander around what I guess is the theme of loss and commonweal shudders to its irresolution. Have a great morning, fellow tweeps! /fin
